Comments

Well, you sold me on the Megawords. I'll be ordering them today.

While debating my teacher friends about whole language vs. phonics, it was interesting to me that they never really considered how phonics affects spelling down the road. They tended to look at it as strictly a reading tool, and a weak one at that. The argument was not only about the rote aspect of learning phonics but that there are "inconsistencies." Like children can't handle such things.

One of the oddest things about all of the reform movements to me is how the "experts" want to remove everything out of a curriculum that grade schoolers are great at like memorization, chanting, and fact-learning, and then replace it with skills requiring higher-ordered thinking that generally doesn't kick in until later for most children.

As an example of the power of the grade school memory, I heard an old Monkees song on the radio that I hadn't heard in around, oh, nearly 40 years. Not once had I heard or thought about this song. My similarly aged friend remembered it, too. Not only did we sing the lyrics perfectly, but we remembered all of the details where instruments came in and exacly how notes were sung differently from one spot to the next. We were both laughing so hard we were crying. I can't remember any thing I've memorized as an adult.

-- SusanS - 15 Jun 2005

Uh, okay I am aware that there are some subject-verb agreement issues in my last post.

--Susan, hoping for a review button at KTM sometime in the future....

-- SusanS - 15 Jun 2005

Oh!

Usability feedback!

Actually, YOU CAN EDIT THIS WHOLE PAGE!

THIS IS A WIKI PAGE!

YOU CAN EDIT OTHER PEOPLE'S COMMENTS IF YOU LIKE!

Now the question is . . . did Carolyn write some super, super-clear instructions.

-- CatherineJohnson - 15 Jun 2005

Nope!

We have no directions!

Somewhere Jakob Nielsen is frowning.

-- CatherineJohnson - 15 Jun 2005

If you're interested, here is Wikipedia's page explaining what a Wiki is, and how you edit pages.

-- CatherineJohnson - 15 Jun 2005

Here are Wikipedia's directions:

Editing is very easy:

• Click edit this page at the top of the page. You can test your first edit right here on this page.
  

• Type a message.
  

• Click save page at the bottom of the page to save your writing ... or "show preview" to test your changes.

Go ahead!

Click on Edit this page!

See what comes up.

If you're feeling a bit less experimental, I've just written some instructions.

WikiHowTo

-- CatherineJohnson - 15 Jun 2005

Thank you Catherine, for nothing is simple to the computer-challenged unless it involves a big shiny button.

-- SusanS - 16 Jun 2005